Brewer United Methodist Church members ready for annual bake sale, bazaar and rummage sale

BREWER – You’ll have to pardon Louise Lawhon and Jeanie Rabb if they have a smear of chocolate on their pants or a dusting of flour in their hair.
The sisters have been working tirelessly the past few days to prepare the first round of cakes and pies they’ll make to sell at the Brewer United Methodist Church bake sale on Oct. 1.
Jeanie specializes in Hershey Bar, red velvet, strawberry and German chocolate cakes, while Louise makes dark chocolate, caramel, pineapple-coconut, fresh coconut and amalgamation cakes.
“We’ve cooked from the time we were born almost,” said Louise, 83. “Our mother had six girls. You were required to learn to cook, sew and keep house.”
“From the time we were teenagers, we’ve been making sweets,” said Jeanie, 80.
The three- and four-layer cakes will sell for between $25 and $40, and the pies will go for around $10 to $15. Small frozen casseroles will run $10 to $12 while the larger ones will bring $20. Frozen soups will be $4 to $8 per container and breads will run $8 to $15.
Some of the most popular casseroles are chicken and rice, Mexican chicken, baked cheese spaghetti, chicken spaghetti, chicken Ro-tel and chicken and dressing. Soups will include tomato, taco soup and vegetable, as well as white chili and beef stew.
All the proceeds from the sale will go toward retiring the debt on the new Fellowship Hall, which was completed in 2010.
The bake sale is also accompanied by a bazaar and a rummage sale (the event is the same day as the Brewer community-wide rummage sale).
“Last year, we made $5,350,” said Vickie Lindsey, one of the organizers. “We had more than 90 casseroles, 77 soups, 27 breads and probably close to 75 cakes for sale.”
The doors open at 7 a.m. and will close early afternoon or when everything has sold.
“If you can’t be here at 7, don’t worry about it, because we’re planning to have plenty,” Lindsey said.
And if all that fresh and frozen food stokes your appetite, you can help yourself to sausage and biscuits for breakfast and hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch that the men’s club will be preparing.
“Although the bake sale and bazaar and rummage sale is spearheaded by the United Methodist Women, everybody in the church helps. It takes everybody,” Lindsey said. “Not one group could pull it off – women, men, children, young and old alike are all involved. People are really good about falling in there and working hard.”
For more information, call (662) 767-9707 or (662) 767-3760. Brewer Bazaar recipes, Page 4C